Agora Media Group Innovation Blog

We are currently working on building AppMarket.tv, the first online portal, community, directory for the emerging industry around TV applications and widgets – an inevitability as TV and the Web come together full force in a convergence that will easily open new doors for the web and mobile development communities due to ported platforms such as HTML 5, Apple, Android, Flash and other technologies that will make up the future landscape on TV.

Please add your company in our directory if you are in the business. It’s free… Or even if you have relevant experience and ‘want’ to offer your portfolio of skills to the industry. If you want to write with us, contact us via the site. Share the knowledge. Brand yourself or your company.

AppMarket.tv Manifesto

We composed a Manifesto (click to read complete Manifesto), explaining our vision on the evolution of the industry.

Manifesto
Appmarket.tv is the Internet’s first portal dedicated to application and middleware development communities in the Social TV and Connected TV landscape.

We support open API’s, SDK’s, WDK’s and our own roots lie in Open Source communities. It’s our opinion that completely closed, proprietary development in this emerging space will fail and models that are built on more systems similar to the Iphone App and Facebook Application worlds will do well. Truly open source software like Google’s Android will likely be the winners.

Revenue sharing between corporate entities and small businesses around and a prevalence of freemium models will appear and flourish. And a new word will enter tech lexicon. tCommerce.

Future advertising models on TV will be dependent on interaction and creative ways to bring brands to viewers as future audiences will no longer accept ‘broken’ TV… or TV with a slew of interruptions. Video On Demand (VOD) and TV in the Cloud, ubiquitous and everywhere, will change that. I expect my daughters, in the future, to think it was novel how they used to have to watch certain programs at certain times when they were young.

The TV industry, like many other’s affected by disruptive and game changing technologies, is a mess. There are so many players and so many technologies right now which is both good and bad. Darwinists say the best will survive, but in the meantime… directional decisions we make now can really affect our futures. There are a lot of choices for developers, investors and consumers. And we want to help sort it out by providing a solid directory, consolidating events worldwide to help us all plan better, and even meet!

Collective Intelligence
We can’t build AppMarket.tv up without the collective intelligence on this industry which is out there, fragmented amongst many industry leaders, technologists, evangelists etc.
read more

Picked up this news from the LA Times blog.

It is not confirmed yet, but the blog mentions an subscription service of $9.95

“[...] according to people with knowledge of the plans.“

The subscription service should start on the 24th of May. Viewers will still be able to view the first couple of shows for free, but for additional shows needs to be paid.
At the end of the article, the mentioning of

“Ultimately, Hulu is expected to adopt the same commercial loads as network television.”

is interesting, because one of the differentiators is the load of commercials. If this will be within the same amounts of network televisions, a Hulu and other streaming video platforms need to position and gain an unique advantage through Content, social aspects etc. Of course syndication their content to devices like the iPhone and iPad could add value to their proposition as well.

Would you pay $9.95 to access a more comprehensive collection on Hulu?
What do you think of the advertising plans similar to existing television networks, are there other revenue models which generate the same or more and be less disruptive?

Recently, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do a lecture / presentation at the Annual MARUG (Marketing Associatie Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Conference,  the largest Dutch marketing event organised by students  here in Groningen. There were over 400 students and business participants this year and the marketing theme for 2010 was Experience Marketing (I actually prefer the term Experiential Marketing). Some of my more recent writings and research have been around emerging television platforms and convergent media so I thought it might be interesting to blend it into the presentation and make it relevant for future marketeers. Because this space could very much play a part in their futures.

by Richard Kastelein

This article first appeared at Atlantic Free Press.

Ever since the New York Times launched word that Google TV will likely become a reality last week, the concept of convergent media has suddenly become a mass meme rather than a tech meme… and probably done more good for IPTV and the blossoming worlds of Social TV, tCommerce, TV Widgets, TV recommendation engines, TV Everywhere, TV 2.0, and opt-in TV advertising than any single event in this emerging landscape.

The TV deal between Google, Sony, Logitech and Intel which flooded the media zeitgeist last week was a perfect riposte to the other news that Facebook topped Google for the week ending March 13th with 7.07 per cent of all Internet traffic for that week, while Google.com got 7.03 per cent.

Sony looks set to rollout new Intel ‘chipped’ TV sets, while Google will make available set-top-boxes (STB)’s – and both will be powered by tiny keyboards built by Logitech. Makes perfect sense.

And what punter would not want an affordable Google Set Top Box (STB) with new cool Logitech remote that does stuff, so he can search his TV and do other cool things? Or just buy a new Sony LCD wall screen that does the same thing – sans the STB?

Interesting to see how it all plays against the Yahoo Connected TV – which already has its feed firmly entrenched in the space and has some cross over with their partners, including Sony and Intel. Most people still don’t even know about Yahoo TV, nor ever heard about. Including most developers I meet at the many events I attend each year in Europe. You can bet, with all the coverage last week, they know about the Google TV foray.

Probably the most exciting news for me is the fact that the New TV platform will be based on Android, and will remain Open Source. That means all code will be transparent, available and open to change and suggestions and managed by a core team… unlike the iPhone,  Facebook and Yahoo Connected TV developer communities  which offer a slice of code to allow developers to develop applications via Application Programming Interface (API)’s or Software Development Kit (SDK)’s.  Bear in mind, any external or 3rd party development has to meet stringent standards for the TV market. read more